G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - 2009 - Dir. Sommers

Man, so I just saw G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, a movie I am in no way ashamed to say I was terribly excited for. Sure, I grew up with the figures and the cartoon... but that had nothing to do with my excitement. I just needed my big, loud, dumb summer flick. I NEEDED IT. What with the horrible betrayal of Transformers 2, I needed something to reinvigorate my faith in the occasional two hour romp of empty brain calories. And they'll probably be a lot of comparisons to Transformers 2 being that they are in a sense spiritual competitors. Actually, how about this, everything I say about GI Joe, Transformers did the opposite. Now I don't have to bring up the bullshit movie anymore. First of all, GI Joe seems to be very competent of its limitations. It doesn't throw a difficult plot our way, so we don't have script jumping hoops to get its point across. There's bad guys with missiles. GI Joe has to stop them. There's some nuances there but... well, take the term NUANCES with a grain of salt. The script doesn't spend a lot of time with elaborate gags or anything. I was pretty pleased with the general lack of goofiness because god knows, there's enough unintentional goofiness abounds. The movie is clearly for kids. No doubt. We are reminded of that pretty early on when a helicopter pilot shouts "OH MY GOSH!" before he is shot down. And there's a variety of "WHOA!" and half hearted "Ahhhhh!"s peppered through the film that made me snicker. But I have no complaint with the actors, they all did their acting very well (BRENDAN FRAISER CAMEO!). The film is pretty direct about just wanted to have a lot of action, not terribly concerned with making us rally behind the characters or try and get us all into emotion. I guess, I dunno, I like Sommers (NOTE: I have not seen Van Helsing). He makes pretty basic action movies, and he makes them well. He seems to be able to assemble all the parts and film it in a very competant, watchable manner. Something I don't take for granted. He's like a nice, sturdy chair. Sure, there's some creaks and digs in it. But it serves the purposes of a chair like no other. It's EXACTLY what it should be. So that's GI Joe. It's an action movies. And sure, it's stupid... it's really stupid. I cringed. Especially at certain MASKS that appeared. But hey, it was fun. And I WILL SEE THE SEQUEL (cause there will be one). AND I WILL BE EXCITED FOR IT! GOOOOO JOE!

If I had a nickle for everytime that Dennis Quaid stood like that, I would give them all to Dennis Quaid for being so great.